


Tragic Space Dementia

by AshVee



Category: Firefly
Genre: Grief, Mention of rape - not pictured, Other, Reavers - Freeform, Stillborn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:07:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: Zoe Washburne loses her tenuous grip on the world, and in the wake of pain and loss, finds herself more understanding of Reavers than anything else





	Tragic Space Dementia

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this is. I set out to do this gritty, terrible piece and ended up pulling most of the punches because I couldn't picture Zoe losing her mind as much as I had set out to make her. If you'd like to see that version, let me know. I might write it yet.

Tragic Space Dementia

Zoe Wasburne was a woman that once commanded respect. She was the spine of steel running through every command she ever held. Except maybe this one. Maybe especially this one. 

She’d been running a little star jumper for the better part of the last two years, darting in and out of Reaver space, salvaging and scavenging and on occasion pulling survivors off of derelict vessels. Some were lucky — most weren’t. 

“Why do they do this?” a woman whispered. She was little over twenty years old with beautiful blue eyes that never seemed to stop crying. The Reavers hadn’t been kind to her. She’d been raped, repeatedly, forced to cut up her own mother and father, brother and sister, stripping their skins as they screamed — as she screamed. Zoe heard her screaming that night. How could she not? There was only a small berth at the rear of the vessel, and the wall was thin. 

“They don’t have anything else,” Zoe said quietly into the large viewing window. “Take away everything good, amplify the bad, and some people...they just don’t have anything else.” 

What she didn’t say is that others ended up like her. Wrath and vengeance. 

They’d been three days in the little star hopper, and Bellerophon was coming up big and beautiful an hour’s easy ride into the atmosphere. The woman was still sitting on the cot, shaking as she ran her hand low over her belly. 

Zoe felt the vague cloying ache of her uterus, and the image of her children, still and silent at birth, flashed in front of her eyes. 

“What if I’m—”

“You’ll go to a doctor, get it taken care of,” Zoe said, cutting her off before she could finish. “Reavers make Reavers.” 

She left the girl at the docks, refueled and restocked, and hit atmo a few hours later. She had things to do, places to be, and a young woman with an ache in her heart and deep at the base of her belly had no place on her vessel. 

A blip on the ship’s cortex was ignored, Mal’s face flashing there. He’d hailed her hourly for a few days, daily a few months after. Now, she saw his face flashing once or twice every year. 

Zoe’s hair turned grey. Her skin wrinkled. The memories, sharp and real and aching, never left. She prayed they’d go before the rest of her, and yet, well into her eighties, drifting along Reaver space — now more a part of them than a part of the rest of the world — she wondered if it wasn’t easier to die young.


End file.
